{"id":116792,"date":"2021-08-05T15:54:44","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T22:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=116792"},"modified":"2021-08-05T15:54:44","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T22:54:44","slug":"sri-lanka-walks-back-fertiliser-ban-over-political-fallout-fears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/08\/05\/sri-lanka-walks-back-fertiliser-ban-over-political-fallout-fears\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka walks back fertiliser ban over political fallout fears"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy France 24<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Sri Lanka’s government on Thursday walked back the lifting of an import ban on most chemical fertilisers over fears of a political fallout, despite warnings from farmers of food shortages and severe damage to the massive tea industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The South Asian nation has been struggling with a cash crunch worsened by the pandemic, with the central bank imposing sweeping import bans since March last year to reduce the outflow of foreign currency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ban on chemical fertilisers — widely used in the tea and rice industries — was opposed by farmers who staged protests after reporting failing vegetable crops as existing stocks began to run out in recent weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, the younger brother of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, had lifted the ban on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president had earlier touted the policy, including on the international stage, as helping Sri Lankan agriculture become “100-percent organic”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a briefing to reporters in Colombo, Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Udith Jayasinghe, said there had actually been “no change in the government policy shift to organic fertiliser”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Some plant nutrients rich in nitrogen will be allowed under strict licensing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Urea fertiliser, which will remain banned, is widely used in the $1.25 billion tea industry — the country’s biggest export — as well as in the farming of rice, the staple food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jayasinghe said farmers would have to use organic substitutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka is among the world’s largest exporters of tea. Ceylon tea is valued for its high quality and flavour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A report by a group of experts warned last month of substantial crop losses and food shortages unless chemical fertiliser was provided urgently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A member of a presidential committee that studied the transition from chemical to organic fertiliser, Herman Gunaratne, said the sudden shift could have catastrophic consequences, especially for tea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We risk losing our international markets for tea,” Gunaratne told AFP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tea plantation executive Sanath Gurunada told AFP over the weekend that the shortages would be felt fully by October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“For the moment we have stocks (of fertiliser), but it would run out in about a month or two. After that we will not get the crop that we used to harvest,” he told AFP at his Hidellana tea factory in the country’s south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“With a decline in crop, our foreign exchange earnings will also go down.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy France 24 Sri Lanka’s government on Thursday walked back the lifting of an import ban on most chemical fertilisers over fears of a political fallout, despite warnings from farmers of food shortages and severe damage to the massive tea industry. The South Asian nation has been struggling with a cash crunch worsened by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[160,176],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-chemical-fertilizer-ban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}